Name:

Vicky Tadros

Email address:

v_tadros@soas.ac.uk

Thesis title:

Listening, Khaleeji-Style

Year of Study:

3

Internal Supervisors

• Lucy Durán
• Ilana Webster-Kogen
• Richard Widdess

Biography

Vicky is a current doctoral researcher working on 'Listening, Khaleeji-Style,' an exploration of music, power and geopolitics in the UAE and across the Gulf. She holds an MMus in Ethnomusicology from SOAS (University of London), where she wrote her dissertation on the same topic, and she has lived in the UAE for over twenty years. She also enjoys playing the kora and singing.

PhD Research

Contemporary life in the UAE is structured around the push and pull of contrasting core values, such as the sacred and the secular, and the traditional and the modern. My research addresses how these values underpin the way in which Gulf countries negotiate power and identity through their respective cultural industries. Importantly, through analysing contemporary Emirati music and listening practices, my research modernises the current musical scholarship pertaining to the Gulf, which has previously been concerned only with pre-oil Gulf culture.

Conferences

• ‘Negotiating the Private: Car Listening Culture and Emirati Values’, British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, 11-14 April, 2019 (Awarded BFE Student Prize).

Affiliations

• British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Vicky is interested in the fields of Sound Studies and Soundscapes as theoretical bases for her research. She is also interested in the ethics of musical listening, primarily through an Islamic lens, and incorporates it into her work.